Okay, I hope that people can agree that THG did a very good job of shining the best light possible on the P4. There are some aspects of the new chip that need work, but it has always been know that Intel was a forward-looking company when if comes to thier new chips (MMX, SSE, and others, I'm sure). Even now, with strong competition from AMD, Intel isn't fazzed and is very willing to come up with something that will perform better as time goes on. When it comes to the new instruction set, I remember that it took awhile for P2 and P3 instruction sets to make it to the market, but as can be seen, some tweaks by Intel and a few other improvements and design changes within the software companies allowed for a great improvement of overall speed for a P2 and P3 system. Also, when Intel gives a license to AMD to allow the use of MMX, SSE, or SSE2, that forces the whole market to accept the new codes, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was either an initial cash investment by AMD to get the licence, or that there is some kind of royalty system that Intel gets something out of the deal. And also, since Intel developed the instruction codes, it can be assumed that their CPUs are more efficent than the AMD ones at processing those instructions.
Remember, as the learned people in the technology world, we are a minority. When people want to buy a new system, they go to Best Buy or Circuit City and buy a pre-built system that is within the price range they want. With the price drops by Intel, I think that was the most important thing that they could do to regain lost market share in the pre-built system market (aka, the mass market). I myself am still an AMD fan, mostly because I find the cheaper price to be the biggest draw, and the wonderful overclocking ability, as well as the general need for a solid knowledge of system building and a desire to want to tweak and play all combine to make the AMD my chip of choice. Some like to setup and forget, and Intel is the perfect system for that. I have a friend who has an AMD system that took five months for him to tweak to perfection, and he still loves it, and I love the need to tweak. I just can't keep still when on the computer. It's like thirty and forty years ago with the hot rods... guys would spend hours tweaking a working car just to get that extra horsepower or that perfect roar from the pipes. Hours were wasted, as most people would be concerned, but they kept at it, and loved doing it. I consider myself to be the same, and that is why an AMD is the way to go for me, but if Intel changes that picture, I won't hesitate to go for it. I have no brand loyalty, I just have a loyalty to myself to make my computer the way I want it. Thank you for reading, I'd love to hear what everyone else has to say.
-SammyBoy
Remember, as the learned people in the technology world, we are a minority. When people want to buy a new system, they go to Best Buy or Circuit City and buy a pre-built system that is within the price range they want. With the price drops by Intel, I think that was the most important thing that they could do to regain lost market share in the pre-built system market (aka, the mass market). I myself am still an AMD fan, mostly because I find the cheaper price to be the biggest draw, and the wonderful overclocking ability, as well as the general need for a solid knowledge of system building and a desire to want to tweak and play all combine to make the AMD my chip of choice. Some like to setup and forget, and Intel is the perfect system for that. I have a friend who has an AMD system that took five months for him to tweak to perfection, and he still loves it, and I love the need to tweak. I just can't keep still when on the computer. It's like thirty and forty years ago with the hot rods... guys would spend hours tweaking a working car just to get that extra horsepower or that perfect roar from the pipes. Hours were wasted, as most people would be concerned, but they kept at it, and loved doing it. I consider myself to be the same, and that is why an AMD is the way to go for me, but if Intel changes that picture, I won't hesitate to go for it. I have no brand loyalty, I just have a loyalty to myself to make my computer the way I want it. Thank you for reading, I'd love to hear what everyone else has to say.
-SammyBoy